THE disappearance of two West Belfast boys during the Troubles is featured in a new documentary which opens at a local cinema this Friday.
The highly acclaimed documentary ‘Lost Boys: Belfast’s Missing Children’ runs at the Kennedy Centre Omniplex from October 27.
Lost Boys delves into a series of unsolved disappearances of young boys in Belfast going back over 50 years as the Troubles raged in the city.
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear from the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again. By 1974, as the Troubles were reaching a bloody and vicious peak, five boys in total had vanished within a five-mile radius.
The documentary highlights the unsolved cases of Thomas Spence (11) and John Rodgers (13) who were last sighted at a bus stop on the Falls Road in November 1974.
David Leckey (11) and Jonathan Aven (14) disappeared in September 1969 after playing truant from school in east Belfast, while 11-year-old Brian McDermott was last seen in Ormeau Park on September 2 1973. His mutilated remains were later found in a sack in the River Lagan not far away from where he disappeared at Annadale Embankment.
The documentary claims that British intelligence may have protected those involved in the abduction and murder of the five children.
Fifty years later, as the disappearances remain unsolved and families continue to search for answers, filmmaker Des Henderson (How to Defuse a Bomb: The Project Children Story) reopens these cold-case files, talking to fresh witnesses, and unearthing disturbing revelations in secret state documents. Could all five disappearances be linked with each other?
In a real-life thriller, and with the help of journalist Martin Dillon, investigative reporter Chris Moore, and criminologist Robert Giles, the film explores every lead to try and find out what may have happened to these young boys. For every stone the team turns over, it becomes clearer that dark forces are at play on an incomprehensible scale. Deep state cover-up sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theory, but this investigation poses some troubling questions. The documentary asks if the state knew more than has been revealed, or even worse, if it was complicit in some way.
This compelling documentary shines light on these largely forgotten cases, unearthing dark evidence that pieces together possible links between all five disappearances, and the work of deep state cover up.
Director, Des Henderson said: “We’re thrilled that the documentary is now set for local cinema release and will be shown at Kennedy Centre Omniplex from this Friday onwards.
QUESTIONS: Producer Ed Stobart and Director Des Henderson
“When we set out to make this documentary, we knew we were dealing with a sensitive subject matter. Little did we know as we started to investigate, we would find such a sinister set of circumstances surrounding the disappearance of five young boys within the same area.
“Due to the nature of the revelations in the documentary, there have been many twists and turns in the completion of the film.”
“It has been 50 years since the boys went missing, so we feel like it is now or never for their story to be heard. At the time there was concerningly little media coverage of what had happened, and the boys seemed to disappear from the public’s mind just as quickly as they had from the street.
“It is unlikely that the boys will ever have justice, given how long ago these crimes took place, but the least we can do is try to expose the truth surrounding their disappearance, and who may have been involved.”
Producer Ed Stobart added: “It has taken five years of intense investigation to get the film to screen, and along the way we have amassed a huge body of evidence around some of the Troubles’ darkest remaining secrets, many of which extend beyond the cases we set out to investigate.
“From what we have found, especially around the Kincora Boys Home scandal, there is much more to be told about the ‘Dirty War’ than is fully in the public domain. The security services, MI5 in particular, have a lot of questions to answer.
“The suffering experienced by the families of the missing and murdered boys, and all those who were abused on an almost industrial scale in Kincora must have been unimaginable. We hope that this film might aid any process that brings them some measure of justice.”
‘Lost Boys: Belfast’s Missing Children’ will be shown at the Kennedy Centre Omniplex in Belfast, from Friday.
